Both Water Like Crimson Sorrow: Shades of Midnight Book 2 and Autumn Burning: Dreadtime Stories for the Wicked Soul will be out in October Thanks to Michael Fish Fisher and Dave McGlumphy for the great covers! Autumn Burning has been coming along quite nicely and I think Sam Gregory , who came up with this great antho, agrees that we're going to have a great book to put out there in October. Keep an eye out for it! Water Like Crimson Sorrow is the gorier, more brutal half of the original ELBF book. I'll be submitting the 3rd book very soon.

This is a blog to announce I am now open to taking in some side editing at fair prices. I'm an editor at J Ellington Ashton Press and with that experience, the work I've been doing as an author, and some previous work as an SEO article writer before that, I have a proven record of quality work and a unique perspective on an author's needs.

My price will go by page count and at $1 per page that should average about $250 - 300 per novel for average length works. I may be open to negotiation on price, especially for some projects with greater length. I would prefer not to edit anything less than 10 pages and nothing longer than 600 so that I'm not distracted from my work at JEA and, of course, with my own writing. I would prefer to work with word documents because it's much easier to use that program's comments system to note changes and make notes on areas where some work is needed.

When I edit I look for proper grammar usage, solid plotting, engaging storytelling and areas where the author could use cutting to improve the flow. I don't have a specific preference on genre, but I do reserve the right to reject a project if I feel that I would not be the right editor for the work (conflict of interest or projects I find offensive due to topics like sexual abuse of minors utilized in a sexually titillating manner for example). I prefer to look at the work first and if I take it on, to receive half at the beginning of the assignment and the other half on completion. I take payments via Paypal.

If you would be interested in seeking my help with editing or have any questions please e-mail me at nightshade44637@gmail.com with the heading "Editing Inquiry" with your book title. Thanks.

I'm going to be polishing Water Like Crimson Sorrow some more today, which means you'll be seeing it out on the market in another month or two. For fans of ELBF when it was a self-titled book, this will be the 2nd half of that book and will feature it's very own well-deserved cover. Once that's out, I will be submitting book 3 (which will be the first new book for you folks that read the first ELBF before we split it) Cool Green Waters. CGW features quite a bit more about three characters that had less focus in the first book. Mateo, Zero and Michael become far more interesting and detailed here and we also get a bit more about Raven and Katja, of course! Expect a lot of action, suspense, dark happenings and some elements that are a little more on the sexy side of things (Mateo happens to run an S/M club) as well.

I have a wee bit of book four to work with too, but it will be a bit before it's ready. That book, titled Hollow Black Corners of the Soul will hopefully be completed in the next year or two, so don't worry! I also have a few ideas in mind for book five which also features some surprising return characters. By the way we'll be calling this series Shades of Midnight, rather apt considering each title features a color, eh?

I will have a short in the JEA horror collection Rejected for Content and will again be taking part in a collaborative 666 project, this one, called Lycanthroship, will feature werewolves and is set shortly after WWII. Both of these books should be working toward completion and are hoped to be out this Fall.

Apocrypha is still in the works, with Robert Lyons﻿ working on his, I might just put together a few more for that too. I also have a couple of other books to work on finishing up like Other Dangers, Jodie, one that's barely developed called The Farm and another which will have dark, posssibly YA fantasy themes and doesn't have a title yet. Long story short there will be a great deal more to expect in the coming years and I do hope you'll enjoy them all as they do. In the meantime, please look into my 3 latest releases below:

Talented authors, Amanda M. Lyons and Mark Woods, team up for an unprecedented collector’s editions of their debut works, with never before seen bonus stories.

Wendy Won’t GoBilly and Sara are living a life of fear. Every day and every night since Sara was small they have been haunted by a terrible apparition. She is cold and she is cruel, strange and frightening. Her name is Wendy, and no matter where they go and no matter what they do, Wendy Won't Go.

Time of TidesWhat if Global Warming wasn't just down to Climate Change? What if it was down to something else? As the worst storm of all time hits the entire globe and as all across the world rivers burst their banks and the oceans start to rise, one family take to the Norfolk Broads to try and escape the floods. Little do they know their nightmare is just beginning...because as they are about to find out, nowhere is safe!

Love Like Blood What would you do to save the life of your child? Anything? This short about a woman’s life turned juxtaposed horror explores just what anything means when your child’s fate is held by an insidious creature. Here we learn that love flows like blood.

Dairy of the DeadEver wonder what would happen to all the pets and livestock of the world during a zombie apocalypse? Mark Woods did in this short about a dairy farm gone array in the worst possible way.

She remembers blood.A fine mist which goes deep into her lungs, over her skin and through the air. She remembers a desert at dusk. The sky indigo blue and the fire bright, so bright that she can see everything. Near the fire, in the night, all she knows is chaos wrapped in crimson. All is death and nightmare with a single solitary dancer who smiles cruelly as he moves. He is power and darkness. He is man and beast, silver coin eyes and that face, those claws and the agony of loss. Time stretches wide; seconds like vast eons swallow up her world. Vince is dead, his mother, his brother and her small son ripped apart and gushing as he/it moves. She is screaming, a howl of agony beyond words, primal and wordless. Still he moves, faster than air, faster than she could ever be. Blood drips from her face as she grunts, running with her lungs on fire and her last remaining hope wrapped in her arms. Lungs starved for air, heart leaping in her chest and her feet like pinions pushing her across the desert, she moves. It will never be enough. She will always fail. He is the wind, feathers and strange sounds wrap around her as she moves on, terrible laughter mocking her in the full bright light of the moon.

-from 'Love Like Blood' a story in Wendy Won't Go: Collector's Editon new from JEA!

I'm just over halfway into ELBF's edits now and something had occurred to me. If you enjoyed the book when I published it originally you might be wondering if it will be worth picking up a copy of the JEA release. Well, the answer is yes. While the indie print of Eyes Like Blue Fire﻿ was a solid one it, like many indie books out there, needed just a bit more polish and refinement to make it the book it always deserved to be. It was also a pretty good sized novel in it's own right and in many ways the events that take place in the first half make up a story worthy of being on it's own, separate from the later half, which stood well on it's own too.

As a result the editors at JEA and I felt it would benefit from being divided into two separate books, ELBF and Water Like Crimson Sorrow. So there will be two books coming out from that one original manuscript and as a result there will be some areas of both chunks that will be getting a well-deserved fleshing out and polishing up before they come out. Why? Well there are some clear points where it needed some refining and others where I could have done more to make the story stronger in that first release. I've enjoyed polishing ELBF these last few months because I was able to see the gems hidden in the rougher bits and make those rougher bits a lot more like the gems. I really think even the fans of that first release are going to enjoy reading this new ELBF and getting a clearer version of the story they love so well. It also means that I'll be able to really focus on that world and get the next book out that much sooner.

If you're a big fan of literary horror and you really enjoyed Wendy Won't Go I'm sure you'll enjoy the new collector's edition coming out very soon from JEA! What makes it so special? While WWG got an ebook release in December of last year it was not released in paperback to the disappointment of some of my readers. Well now it will be out in paperback and it comes with both Mark Woods' enormously successful Time of Tides and a bonus story called Love Like Blood which I've always seen as another side of the coin or sister story to WWG. Time of Tides will also be getting a special Collector's Edition with WWG and a bonus story called Dairy of the Dead to make his edition just as collectible for horror fans! New to paperback for $9.99 and in a special collector's edition for ebook for $2.99 starting tomorrow :) Great literary horror stories from two of JEAs great authors! Keep a look out for the release and links tomorrow!

Now that I have a new home in JEA, I've become an editor there and Wendy Won't Go has made its way onto Kindle I think it's time I announce the re-release of my first book Eyes Like Blue Fire! I don't have a definitive release date yet (we're editing it up and making sure you get a great copy of the book) but I am proud to present the lovely new cover made for me by Marla Ringling Rhysen. I'm so happy to have a cover that really seems to catch some of the atmosphere of the book! This scene is where Katja first walks up on Raven in the cemetery and anyone who's read the book will know that is a very pivotal scene. I hope you all like it and that you agree about it fitting my novel :) Please feel free to tell me what you think and keep an eye out for its release in the coming months!

Oh wow, it's been so crazy I actually forgot to tell you guys that Wendy Won't Go is out on Amazon! It came out Dec 16th and I would be very happy if you could give it a look. If you buy it, please spread the word and write a review on Goodreads and/or Amazon! Thanks for your support! You can find WWG at this link:

I knew the title for my short story must have come from something I'd heard or read but I didn't actually realize that there would end up being a sort of parallel to the meaning of the song and the message of the story. Love Like Blood is still in progress but I have enough done and know enough about how it will end to find this interesting. Love Like Blood is a story about a Skinwalker (the picture I thought of most for my interpretation is above but feel free to picture him anyway you like) and a woman who makes a bargain with it to try and save what she holds dear. Determined to fight for what she's lost she endures a lot of hardships, involves herself in horrible acts and literally thrives on the barest knowledge that there is something left to hope for, something worth fighting to keep.

Love Like Blood also has a few parallels to Wendy Won't Go in that they both have a lot to say about endurance through adversity, the terrible weight of loss and the human heart's desire to fight for what belongs to it. There are differences between the two however. Wendy Won't Go is a larger story because it needed detail to express the enormity of the tale but Love Like Blood is much more streamlined and imagery based in order to express the protagonists focus and skewed way of thinking. The streamlines style has made it just as challenging to write as WWG despite it only being about half it's size.

Looking over the stories I've written for Apocrypha quite a few of them really are about the sort of things that concern parents. Am I good enough at this? Am I strong enough to endure if things don't go the way I expect them to? What would I do if something happened to my children? Why did this happen to us and how will we survive as a family? Most of the ideas for these stories came to me while I was pregnant with Sasha and shortly after she was born and I suppose that has a lot to do with it.

If you follow me on Facebook you know that I was picked up by J Ellington Ashton Press recently. It's been an interesting thing getting used to some of the differences between being a self-pubbed author and going over to being a small press author. Thus far it's been a very good thing and I'm happy to say that very soon, you'll be able to pick up a copy of the novelette that caught my publisher's attention!

At the left you can see the great cover Susan Simone made for the story and I have to say that it represents it very well. Let me know what you think of the cover and I'll let you know when it'll be ready. There are a few things to finish up in the meantime, but I can tell you a little about the book:

Billy and Sara are living a life of fear. Every day and every night since Sara was small they have been haunted by a terrible apparition. She is cold and she is cruel, strange and frightening. Her name is Wendy and no matter where they go and no matter what they do Wendy Won't Go.

What is Wendy Won't Go about? I can't tell you much more than that without ruining the story and there are so many little things you'll want to watch for as you go along. It's a meaningful story and it has a lot of power. I hope you'll enjoy reading it as much as I did when I finally had the end in sight and it all became clear!